


Paz

by SegaBarrett



Category: Wiseguy
Genre: AU season 4, Captivity, Death Squad, El Salvador, Gen, Rescue, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:47:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21829216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Frank comes to get Vinnie.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Paz

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sholio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I don't own Wiseguy and make no money from this.

Vinnie Terranova had lost track of the days. He had lost track of them a long, long time ago. After all, there was no light in this room. They made sure of that. If he could see light, that would mean he could figure out what day it was and maybe even where he was.

That wouldn’t do. After all, these men were professionals. There was no doubt of that and even more than that, there was no room for error.

He could remember landing here in El Salvador, remember asking around, remembered checking in with Frank – Frank! Did he know where he was now?

He had talked with him before he’d went off on the mission, but that didn’t mean that he could figure out wherever in this country he had been taken to. Even Frank wasn’t that good – was it? (God, Vinnie really hoped that somehow Frank was just that good.)

His arms were stretched to their limit – he could remember reading a book as a kid about the Tower of London and he was finding that reading about it had been much more enjoyable than actually experiencing the rack in person. If he rolled his shoulders a little too far to the side, he was sure his shoulder would dislocate.

He wondered what they were going to ask him. His Spanish wasn’t good, so that would probably be a problem. What if he couldn’t even tell what they were asking him, and they would just tear him apart due to a lack of communication?

He really should have paid better attention in Spanish class. That much was abundantly clear.

But on the other hand – Frank. Frank knew where he was, and he had come to rescue Frank when he’d been the one in this predicament, so he really should repay the favor to Vinnie – shouldn’t he? Shouldn’t he?

Vinnie was starting to feel more than a little hysterical, like he was trapped in an elevator and was slowly feeling the air get sucked out of the place, realizing that he would have nothing to keep his mind occupied and would slowly go insane and just start eating his own eyes and hair or something.

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

***

Vinnie opened his eyes again with a long, beleaguered sigh. They were gone again and he was lost with his own thoughts; well, that and the ghosts – Sonny was there and Roger too. Albert.

When they came by, that was bad – always rapid-fire questions in Spanish that he was too dazed to even try to answer, either with a lie or with the truth – but when they went away that was so much worse. 

“No one knows how to torture Vinnie like himself, huh?” 

That was Pete’s voice, ringing in his ear. Another person that died on his watch; another person that he just couldn’t save.

It made sense that Frank wouldn’t be coming for him. Nothing was left at the end of the road but a sheer plummet.

***

It was hard to keep his eyes open, and Vinnie was starting to wonder if maybe it wasn’t information they were looking for at all, but just to eliminate Vinnie entirely.

Maybe it was chickens coming home to roost; maybe it was just the end of the road. He had thought it would be more dramatic than this, that it would end in a bang and not a whimper, that it would be some sort of showdown between him and, at last, a bad guy who he could know for sure was really, truly bad (to sacrifice himself a time it wouldn’t hurt).

There was a dull, throb to it, as if someone had played him like a guitar string.

He barely heard it when the bombs went off.

***

He opened his eyes slowly, finding it hard as the light flooded in and hurt. He couldn’t tell where he was, but he was away from the torture chamber. His wrists were free, and the room was a mild temperature. Something felt safe about it, even if he didn’t understand how that could be.

Maybe he was dead; maybe he had finally died. Pete would have something to say about all of this.

“Vince.”

The voice seemed to come shining in from above, a low gleam of sunlight that reached his cheeks first and made them feel oddly warm. It was familiar – not one of them; he knew that much. 

“Frank,” Vinnie rasped the word, the name, though he had forgotten how to use his voice somewhere along the line. There hadn’t been much room for it in a room where they didn’t care what his answers were. 

How did he know that this was really Frank? What if this was just another hallucination down in the center? Maybe he was still trapped and his brain had decided to shut down and play tricks on him, or maybe he was really dead this time?

“Wake up, you dumbo.”

Okay, well that did sound a lot like the real Frank, he had to admit. 

“Frank?” he mumbled again, letting his eyes adjust; it was indeed Frank standing before him, with the same disinterested gaze, wearing an all-black ensemble and looking as if he would rather be anywhere else in the world. “How did you find me? How did you come get me?”

“You forget that I work for the OCB, too.”

“I mean, I never doubted you, Frank,” Vinnie tried to put the usual bite into how he said the name, but it was harder with his face being unexpectedly swollen. “But you couldn’t exactly look me up in the Yellow Pages.”

Frank snorted.

“I have a few tricks up my sleeve that I use from time to time. Your Uncle Mike is worried about you, too. I had to stop him from flying down here himself.”

“Down here?” Vinnie asked. “You mean we’re…?”

“Still in El Salvador? That’s right. There are a few other eventualities we need to contend with.”

“Like we’re still in El Salvador?!” Vinnie exclaimed, trying to stand up but thinking better of it as he immediately felt light-headed.

“We are, but before you pop a blood vessel, I have a plan.”

Vinnie narrowed his eyes at him, as best he could.

“What does your plan involve, because I’m pretty sure now both of us are going to have a death squad on our asses.”

“I may have been born at night, but it wasn’t last night, Vinnie. I know what we’re dealing with, and I know how to get us out.”

Vinnie dragged his hands down his face.

“You’re not really filling me with confidence right now, Frank.”

“Yes, well, how do you think that I felt when you ran off here to try and save the world – you ended up in a death chamber, Vinnie. Don’t think that I’m going to forget that.”

“And I don’t think you’re about to let me forget it, either,” Vinnie replied.

Frank sighed, and Vinnie watched as he crossed the room.

“Where are we, anyway? What place is this?”

“A church,” Frank explained, gesturing around at the crumbling crosses and pictures of saints painted along the walls.

“Oh good,” Vinnie said, “At least the Lord’s on our side, I guess. I’ll check in with Sister Mary Agnes and ask her if she can get us out.”

Frank rolled his eyes. 

“I’m glad you can find all of this funny, Vinnie. Because you weren’t looking all that hilarious a little while ago.”

“I’m a barrel of laughs,” Vinnie retorted. “That is, if I could bring in enough breath to actually laugh – I think I have more ribs than I’m really supposed to.”

“Once we get back stateside, I’m going to set you up with the best painkillers in town. Until then… get some rest.”

“In the arms of the Lord?” Vinnie said with a smirk.

“In the arms of Jesu Christo,” Frank replied.

***

“It’s time to go, Vinnie, and it’s time to go now.”

Vinnie wanted to roll over and go back to bed; that was all that he wanted. He wondered if his father was telling him to get up – but that was odd, it was always his mother, going, “Vincenzo, Peter, it’s time to get up, time to get up,” as they would complain and grumble and ask for five more minutes.

Now, there were hands shaking him and his head was exploding into a million pieces, and he did not want to go anywhere at all and didn’t even have the strength to pitifully beg for five more minutes. He was going to need a lifetime of minutes for the headache he had. And his arms, too, had he slept on them wrong?

“Come on, Vinnie, we need to go. Now’s no time to decide you’re a sleepyhead.”

Now, arms were lifting him up, a lot rougher than he would have liked, and Vinnie let out an angry grumble of protest.

And then he was flying through the air (with the greatest of ease, a confused little voice in the back of his head sang, and that was back from his childhood too, like he couldn’t get out of it even if he tried) and then he was plopped down on his feet so hard it hurt.

“Run!” And the voice clicked then, Frank’s voice, Frank’s angry, stubborn perfect voice. It had all been real and he was safe, really safe, and would never have to worry about… well, not quite. He would have to run. He would have to listen to Frank.

He should have been listening to Frank his whole damn life.

***

The girl’s name was Sonia, and she had black hair that seemed to go on for miles. Her friend was older, or maybe it was her mother or older sister – neither of them talked much, but they knew the older woman was named Alba and that she was probably the one calling the shots.

“You’re lucky that we’re headed to America anyway, but it will be a long journey,” Alba said. “You both need to be strong. We’ve had to be strong, here. The weak get eaten.”

They instructed Frank and Vinnie to both climb into the back trunk of the car, and to be as quiet as they could be.

“I think I’ll manage,” Frank said, giving a wry look over at Vinnie.

“How will you live without my wit?” Vinnie asked.

***

It took 24 hours to drive to Mexico, and Vinnie couldn’t sleep a single one of them, as he kept bouncing against Frank and reactivating every sore, aching, jostled around bone in his entire body. He told himself that he would retire and, when he had counted and was sure he was out of earshot of anyone who would realize he was speaking from a trunk, he told Frank too.

He could feel Frank smiling even in the darkness as they went rattling along the highway. 

“No, you won’t, Vinnie. In a month you’ll be right back at it. And you know why?”

“No, Frank. Why?”

“Because you’re good at it. You’re the best agent I’ve ever worked with.”

“Oh, you said that. Now I know that we’re going to die at some point.”

“Maybe you.”

“Both of us. Horribly. I better get my confession in order.”

“Well, don’t tell it to me, Vinnie. It’s probably disgusting.”

***

The beaches in Mexico were beautiful. The sun seemed to rip through the city and land on them in a way that made them each feel like they were floating.

Vinnie would heal, and then he would go back. He would debrief – he was forever debriefing, forever reconfiguring everything that he had thought that he knew before. He would lose himself, and Frank would have to help find him again.

There was no point in remaking or breaking the wheel. All that was left to do was ride it, like a lonely horse, until the end of time.


End file.
